Promotions must be based on qualification, competence— Dep. Minister
The Deputy Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation, Mr William Sabi, has called for promotions in the public sector to be based on performance, professional qualification and competence and not necessarily on the number of years spent in the service.
According to him, promoting people to higher position mainly based on their years of service does not bode well for the country as it does not bring about excellence in the public sector
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He said "we have directors, deputy directors who have gone through this kind of system without any additional training and it is one of the biggest challenges that we are facing in our public sector".
He observed that there were many people in the public sector who had risen through the ranks to occupy top positions solely based on their longevity on the job, without any additional training, adding that most civil servants were afraid to take study leave to upgrade themselves for the fear of losing their portfolios.
"Most of the time, the executives at the senior positions will always tell you that they don't have the time and to ask them to go back to the classroom to go and do full-time academic work is always an issue".
Launch of GIMPA ALET
"Indeed some are even afraid that if they ask for study leave by the time they come back somebody might have taken their position," he said while speaking at the launch of the Academy of Leadership and Executive Training (ALET) in Accra last Thursday.
As part of its effort to revisit its core mandate of providing management and development programmes, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) has launched the ALET to serve as the training wing of the institution.
According to the acting Director of the ALET, Dr Charles Amoatey, the school will be a one-stop-shop training centre, offering opportunities for senior leaders and managers across the various facet of the economy to optimise their effectiveness and accelerate impact.
"It is intended to help develop the leadership capacity of our country and provide executive training for both private sector senior managers and those in governmental and non-governmental agencies," he further explained.
The ALET, he added, would organise open enrolment and customised programmes.
He furher explained that the open enrolment programmes were advertised courses which would invite nominees from all organisations to participate while the customised one was tailored to address peculiar training needs on the request of a specific organisation.
Continuous training
The Rector of GIMPA, Professor Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson, said continuous education was important to professional development, hence the need for professionals, especially those in the public sector, to be sponsored to seek it to help them work better for the country.
He said the state reneged on its obligations to the school in terms of subventions many years ago, on the understanding that it would pay for the training of its civil servants in the school, but that part of the agreement had not been honoured, leaving the civil servants to struggle to pay for their own training.
The result, he said, "has been an adverse one on the performance and delivery by public sector workers because they are not being required and funded to come for training".
The introduction of the ALET, he added, meant that the institution was going back to its original mission of providing executive training to public and private sector workers in the country and the entire continent.